CSCE Makes Progress on Sustainability, But “We’re Not There Yet”

In 2012, ASCE, the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering (CSCE) and the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) signed a formal agreement recognizing that emerging global challenges over the prior decade, including the financial crisis, population migration, and food and energy crises, reinforced the need to secure and fulfill internationally agreed commitments to sustainable development.

The three organizations agreed to work jointly to collaborate on the development and implementation of national sustainable infrastructure action plans, encourage engineers to engage in building sustainable engineering capacity in the developing world, and work through national representatives to coordinate civil engineering views within the World Federation of Engineering Organizations to influence global approaches to sustainable infrastructure.

Speaking in an interview at the International Conference on Sustainable Development in Long Beach, CA, in November, Reg Andres, president of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers, reflected on his organization’s progress in addressing those goals.

“It’s still a challenge for us,” Andres says. “I wouldn’t say that we’ve gone far enough … to sufficiently design in the full context of sustainability.”

Andres believes the inspiration for change resides within the “idealistic” young engineers, who he urges to nurture that idealism and “speak it loud.”